Skoda India investing Rs 100 crore to boost brand

In an effort to improve its brand reputation, which has taken a beating for its poor aftersales service Skoda Auto India has announced a raft of measures to win back the trust of the customer. These new initiatives will be put into play from September 1, 2016. 

Despite producing some excellent and well-priced products, like the Octavia and Superb, customers are still wary of buying a Skoda because of the tales of woe from owners, especially those that suffered gearbox failures on the previous generation Superb. Though Skoda has dramatically improved both the reliability and ownership experience of its products, it still hasn’t managed to shake off the skepticism that still persists in buyers’ minds.

Thus as part of the turnaround plan and to give a special assurance to its customers, starting this August Skoda will offer a four year or 1,00,000km warranty as standard on any new Skoda car. The road-side assistance period has also been increased to four years with an unlimited kilometre count. 

To dispel the perception that Skoda cars are expensive to maintain with high service and spare parts costs, Skoda will now offer a periodic maintenance package for four years or 60,000km, which can be purchased as an optional extra. Pricing though will be announced in September.

Also, all Skoda services will now be done with ‘Menu pricing’ wherein the prices for services both required and recommended are fixed by Skoda and will be carried out only after customer approval. 

To tackle service speed, Skoda now promises a same day delivery for customers when the car goes in for its scheduled periodic maintenance. As a measure of confidence, Skoda says that it will not charge customers at all if the car is not ready by the same day or if buyers do not receive an itemised bill for the service.

There is also a mobile application called, ‘MYSKODA’ which comes with a service cost calculator – an archive of previous service records, customer-care hotline numbers and a handy trip calculator too, among other features. 

On the sales front, Skoda dealerships will get a new corporate identity both external and internal with new signages and interior décor. There is also an app called the iConsultant which will be deployed for all potential customer interactions.  

While these measures are many and promising Skoda need to ensure that they are effectively implemented on ground to ensure that their new models announced (storylink) have a fighting chance to win over customers.

Also read: Skoda to bring four new models in India